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Virginia History

This interview airs beginning December 19.
We visit the Central Rappahannock Heritage Center, at Maury Commons, to talk to two of its founders, Tony and Patricia Kent. The Center houses an extensive collection of documents, photographs, and records that give us insight into the lives and events of generations gone by. Debby Klein interviews the Kents on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

The Central Rappahannock Regional Library will host Civil War 150, a national traveling exhibition, on display at the library headquarters, 1201 Caroline Street, Fredericksburg, from Tuesday, November 27 to Sunday, December 16.

The library is inviting the public to an opening reception, Friday, November 30, at 5:30. National Park Service Chief Historian John Hennessy will briefly address the themes of the exhibit.

As part of the area’s ongoing commemoration of the war’s sesquicentennial, the library invites the community to view this major exhibit that explores “the war and its meaning through the words of those who lived it," to experience the battle through the eyes of major political figures, soldiers, families, and freedmen. Through reproductions of documents, photographs, and posters, the exhibition invites visitors to learn about events that took place during the war. By virtue of letters, personal accounts, and images, learn how people grappled with the end of slavery, the nature of democracy and citizenship, the human toll of civil war, and the role of a president in wartime.

The Civil War 150 exhibition planners recommend these titles for possible group discussions. Videos whose titles are linked may be found in the Central Rappahannock Regional Library. Please click on the title to begin the reserve process. Other videos on this list may be available through our interlibrary loan service.

The Civil War 150 exhibition planners recommend these titles for possible book group discussions. Books whose titles are linked may be found in the Central Rappahannock Regional Library. Please click on the title to begin the reserve process. Other books may be available through our interlibrary loan service.

This interview airs beginning October 10.
Larry McIrvin explains the life of the Civil War soldier, both Union and Confederate, with uniforms, arms, and equipment and shares his experience as a Living Historian on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

This interview airs beginning May 23.
In the fifth and final of a series on the expansion of the Fredericksburg Area Museum, Senior Vice President of Collections and Exhibitions Mary Helen Dellinger meets with Debby Klein to talk about the completion of this amazing project. We also take a peek at some of the new exhibit spaces on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

The Seventeenth Child, by Dorothy Marie Rice & Lucille Mabel Walthall Payne, sets down the memories of a childhood lived in the countryside of 1930s Virginia by a black woman who grew up before the Civil Rights Movement made so many gains. These remembrances are plain, soft-spoken and ring true to an age that was certainly different from the one we know. In some ways, it was a harder time as in her earliest years even basic food was very hard to come by and the sharecropping system made it difficult for all farmers, black and white, to get ahead or even stay afloat during the bad harvest years.

But it was the warmth of family, faith, shared hardship and simple joys that made those days good as well as difficult. The children worked, not only because their help was needed but because it was understood that working was a good thing in and of itself. They helped pull and tend tobacco, can vegetables, sew quilts, raise chickens, and shell corn. Lucille Payne tells of how hard it was to earn money. How sometimes her mother might not be paid much more than fifty cents for a hard day’s washing of filthy clothes in a dark and cold shed. Well, fifty cents and a hambone that might not be fit to eat without it being scrubbed, too, and sometimes not even then. But her mother said, “Well, you accept what they give you; next time it might be better.”

It wasn’t all about acceptance. Sometimes Lucille would see her mother spit in the water while she washed and she would ask her why she did that. “That helps to get them clean.” But I know she was just so angry because she had to survive. When you have so many children you have to survive the best way you can. Likewise, when white children rode the bus to their segregated school, leaving the black children to walk and even calling them names, the black children got a bit of revenge…and a chance to be better than their so-called betters with an act of charity.

This interview airs beginning April 18.
Jane Conner has long been interested in the history of Stafford County and has spent many years uncovering its past and its people. As a former teacher she understands the importance of that past and shares her findings and her dedication to Stafford County’s future in an interview with Debby Klein on CRRL Presents a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

This interview airs beginning Wednesday, March 28.
The Patawomeck Indians played an important role during the clash over the first Virginia settlement at Jamestown. Robert Green, the 21st century Patawomeck Chief, talks to Debby Klein about his work to preserve the rich lineage of his tribe on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.